Untied Shoelaces
by FlyingShoes135
Summary: Lance's shoelaces are always tired tight until one night they're not. When he gets caught making out with a random guy and the video is reposted all over Twitter, his social life is a mess, but he'll always be able to rely on the cool indifference of Keith. Keith's shoelaces are always untied, and they feel as untamed as his heart when he sees Lance. No, it's not a crush.
1. Chapter 1

p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Lance's POV/p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"If Lance were mature, he would admit with candor that his actions were his own fault and he should face the consequences as a responsible young adult. However, it was a bold assumption to be made that Lance was mature./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"The real train of thought that departed the station that was Lance's mind went more like this: Everything was to blame on his Abuelo. If his Abuelo had not come to America, he would never have met his Abuela, and thus, his father would never have been born, and his parents would not have met, and he would not have been born, which meant that he would have no younger siblings to make him late for school, unable to double-knot his shoelaces./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"If his Abuelo didn't come to America, he would not have tripped on his untied shoelace at only his second (2nd) real high school party. As a junior./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"If Lance hadn't tripped on his shoelace, he would not have ended up nose-to-nose with his know-it-all, teacher's pet yet also somehow cool artsy rebel, obnoxiously handsome, effortlessly chivalrous, and naturally athletic rival, Keith. By some cruel twist of fate, Keith happened to be tying his shoe at the exact moment that someone stepped on Lance's untied shoelace and caused him to trip and fall to the floor, narrowly missing landing on Keith./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"If Lance hadn't narrowly avoided smashing his face into Keith's (perfect, delicate, gorgeous, strikingly elegant) face, he would not have been flustered./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"If Lance hadn't been flustered, he would not have drank quite so many shots (partially in an attempt to one-up Keith, who seemed to not even notice the competition Lance was trying to goad him into)./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"If Lance hadn't drank nearly five (5) tequila shots, he wouldn't have been so drunk, and he would not have lost his inhibitions./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"No, if his Abuela had simply decided to stay put in Cuba, Lance wouldn't be a non-anxious, reckless, and impulsive teenager at a stupid high school rager, that by all leaps of logic, he should not have even been invited to in the first place./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"However, as fate (or rather, the economic situation) would have it, his Abuela did decide to come to America, and because of that, a video of Lance making out with a random boy in a closet was shared and seen by over half the school, effectively shoving Lance out of the closet, and outing him to the entire school- no, the entire world./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Gee, thanks, Geraldine. You'd think someone with a name like Geraldine would think twice before deciding to humiliate someone like this, but evidently Geraldine just wanted someone else to become a social pariah. Lance blamed it on his name. People with names like Aiden never got into these kinds of situations. Lance also bet that Keith would have been too cool and smart to ever get caught with his pants down like this (proverbially speaking, of course)./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Sadly, Lance was also a fairly smart guy. Smart enough to know he couldn't really blame this on his Abuelo. Also smart enough to realize the social consequences of this video and to know that nobody in his family could see it. It would either result with him spending the next two years in some all-boys Catholic school they couldn't afford (which would also be counter-intuitive, considering that it was uhh, an all-boys school) or with Veronica smacking down anyone involved in the invasion of Lance's privacy./p  
p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-size: 15.12px; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; list-style: none; margin: 1.286em auto; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.5; color: #2a2a2a;"Anxiety was a bitch, anyways./p 


	2. Chapter 2

Keith's POV

Keith had only been at school for ten minutes, and he already wanted to leave. Aside from school being, well, _school_, he already faced a one-two-three blow to his nearly nonexistent sense of optimism through one (1) incident of being honked at in the parking lot, causing Keith to jump and narrowly avoid tripping on the curb and _actually_ getting hit; two (2) pieces of gum stuck on the soles of his already beat up not-so-white sneakers; and three (3) couples making out in the hallway, one of whom rolled directly across Keith's locker, forcing him to stop, put down his backpack, and pull out a cleansing wipe, and give a thorough wipe-down of the cool metal surface, while glaring at the oblivious duo from the corner of his eye.

Something about Homecoming season just seemed to make teenage hormones go wild. Which made Keith's annoyance levels go wild. Not to mention the massive hangover he was going through. Which would obviously be another reason to skip school. Unfortunately or him, Shiro, his once foster-brother, now legal-father, was a new teacher at his high school, meaning he couldn't ditch without being caught. As weird as their home life was, Keith didn't want to disappoint the maybe one person in his life who genuinely cared about his well-being.

Pulling out his earbuds, Keith tried to ease himself into the sounds of the hallway like one does stepping into a cold pool. Instead, the hallway was an ocean, and the sound a riptide to his fragile brain.

Keith began to randomly grab notebooks whilst shoving his backpack in his locker and swearing never to get drunk again. Ordinarily, he didn't drink at all, but after the run-in with Lance so early in the evening, he had thought, _screw it_, and drank a little to loosen up and get Lance out of his mind. Who knew tequila shots added up so quickly?

After the initial assault on his ears, the sounds of the hallway gave way to an idle hum, as he overheard various bits of conversation totally out of context, some shrieks, and for some reason, The Fountain of Wayne's rendition of "Stacy's Mom."

Lance's voice carried over the crowd, causing Keith to clearly hear "¡Ay Dios Mío! Did everyone get shitfaced drunk last night, or is it just me?" like a hammer right behind his eyes.

Hunk laughed warmly, tugging Lance in for a hug and to scrub his fist through Lance's hair. "Lucky for you, I brought my mom's perfect hangover remedy! I figured you would need it."

"Thanks, Hunk," Lance replied. "I could have done without the noogie, though."

Keith rolled his eyes, knowing without having to look that Lance would be giving one of his blindingly white smiles.

Pidge pushed past him, completing the trio of people who barely noticed him (aside from Lance, who seemed to go out of his way to push Keith's buttons). "Lance isn't gonna like this," she muttered under her breath.

Glancing down at people's phones, Keith could see that nearly everyone seemed to be watching the same grainy, low-quality video of two boys in a closet.

"Hey!" a LAX-bro type objected as Keith snatched his phone out of his hand.

Keith stared at the video posted on Twitter. Nothing on Twitter ever gained this much traction at a high school before, and he figured that the entire school _probably_ hadn't decided to watch gay teen porn overnight, and used his extraordinary powers of deduction to see flashing lights, guessing that it was at a party, and given the fact that Keith's leather jacket was hanging up in that closet, it was the party he had been at last night. Judging from the checkered Vans (which everyone seemed to own a pair of, but not everybody's were th_a_t shade of cerulean blue), one of the boys in the video was Lance.

"Sorry, dude," Keith said insincerely, tossing the underclassman's phone back to him.

"Oh, no problem, Keith," the guy amended, noticing who Keith was. "You are Keith, right? We played LAX together?"

"Hmm, nope, don't remember, didn't happen," Keith muttered, shoving past various bodies, including that of a visibly distraught Lance and his gang.

"You were the captain!"

Keith shook of the guy's annoying voice and kept moving, though unable to erase the blurry .mpeg4 from his mind. Lance, with his hands wrapped around someone's body. A male someone. And it wasn't just his hands that were moving. And maybe, just _maybe_, those butterfly sick feelings fluttering around in the pit of his stomach weren't butterflies after all, but rather, the demon known as envy. That couldn't be the case though. Just because he found himself staring at Lance from time to time didn't mean he wanted to _kiss_ Lance.


End file.
